


Good Reasons to Freeze to Death

by SkartoArgento



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Angst, Body Modification, CASIE augmentation misuse, Flashbacks, Friendship, Hallucinations, Kissing, M/M, Office drama, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 02:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8353744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkartoArgento/pseuds/SkartoArgento
Summary: Grief works in strange ways. After Panchaea, Pritchard finds it hard to cope.





	

The first explosion – a distant impact, a fist punching into the sea.

Drops of water ran down concrete walls. Red lights flashed in the sudden dark, turned streams to veins. No windows. Just this coffin of a room, empty of furniture, hundreds of meters down, under the ocean. A depth that crushed perspective.

Pressure cracked something nearby with the sound of breaking bone.

Floor lurched under his feet. More water, flooding around his ankles.

Cold crept up his legs. Ice stuck his fingers to his palms. Tongue frozen in place. Panchaea (and it _was_ Panchaea, wasn't it, it would always be Pancahea) broke apart with a scream of metal, a shriek so loud it tore through his ears.

And Jensen stood there next to him, stared at the wall through dark lenses as though examining a fine piece of art.

_You deserved better._

The second explosion, somewhere above, over their heads. What sounded like the entire ocean rushing to fill all those floors. Trapped now, trapped in this tiny room with the water slowly, slowly inching its way up their bodies. The grip of ice numbed terror, seeped inside and kept him still, kept him _there_.

_And were you scared at the end? Did you try and escape? Were you hurt? Already dead?_

Jensen floundering on the ground, lenses cracked, spitting blood. Legs shattered and floating.

Frost stuck his eyelids open. He _saw._

The final explosion shattered the wall, and the water smashed through, white and furious and death.

 

 

A knock at the door, insistent, yanked Frank into reality.

Like that violent gush of ocean, the world slammed into him, around him. His hand against the window of his small apartment. Coffee on his tongue. And outside, the first snow to grace Detroit's streets for seven years. Flakes rushed past the glass, dizzy specks of white against black sky, then the yellow stain of high-rise apartment lights. Even the insidious creep of global warming could be beaten occasionally, it seemed.

His palm, numb, and when he took it away from the window, blood rushed back to fill pale skin.

Had he been dreaming?

One sharp breath in, like plunging into an icy lake, and he sighed it out to fog the glass. Imagination that masqueraded as a dream. The second time today. Did that count as a hallucination? Or was there another word for it – something in French, perhaps – something that sounded like a romantic swoon rather than the ugly sensation of rotting from the head. Three days without sleep this time. What did he expect? Idiot.

Whoever stood behind his door apparently lacked manners, and the persistent hammer sounded as though they had gone from knuckles to the side of their fist.

Stun gun on the table, a sleek little deceptive thing. Small, and cheap, but it delivered a great whack if anyone tried to grab him. Only happened once, walking back from the Sarif Industries building – some woman a head taller than him, wearing a faded red shirt of the Derelict Row Ballers. Her garbled shriek of surprise and pain chased him all the way back to the apartment. What did concern him about the stun gun was the fact that he didn't remember leaving it on the table. He didn't remember putting more coffee on either, or accessing the website that glowed on his computer screen. Skeletal blueprints of Panchea. No wonder he had... dreamed.

The stun gun weighed his hand down. Green light blipped. Fully charged. Plastic casing dug into his skin –

“ _I told you, Francis, you're holding that thing all wrong.”_

_Infuriating. His teeth clenched together, and spite rose, determined to ignore any advice, but Jensen gripped his wrist, nudged his fingers around. He allowed that with some trepidation; six months since augmentation and Jensen, with all the concentration levels of a particularly stupid dog, still snapped pens in half._

_But he did have a better hold on the stun gun now. Easier to rotate._

“ _Better. But I hope no one ever lets you have an actual gun.” Under the lights in Jensen's office, eye lenses gleamed orange. “Go for the arm if you can. Throat or chest if you don't care about killing them.”_

The door handle, cold under his palm.

A dark brown eye peered through the crack. Not a gang member or one of Sarif's security goons. Relief pricked his throat, the corners of his eyes. Maybe it showed, because Malik's mouth quirked. A real smile, not sympathetic. Not like at Sarif HQ where everyone had begun to stare, to give him looks reserved for the bed-ridden, the terminal. Yes, he looked awful. Yes, he'd spent some time with Jensen before Panchaea. Let them assume and guess and gossip. It didn't matter.

“Hey, you.” Gentle, coaxing him like a scared dog. Malik pressed her face to the gap. Hair a little longer than he remembered, feathering at her cheeks instead of brushing her ears. “Been a while, huh?”

“Four months, Malik. Not that I'm counting.” A surge of something white-hot and bitter in his throat. “I thought you were dead too.”

The smile shrank. “I'm sorry, Frank.”

“You were with Jensen in Hengsha and then... nothing. Like you'd disappeared. Dropped out of the sky. No sign of your GPL tracker. You... couldn't even send me an email?”

“I ran into some problems. Then I come back here and find you've been getting into your own trouble – with the big boss, no less.” The smile came back, crinkled the corners of her eyes. “You never did learn to pick your fights. Can I come in?”

“Anyone else with you?”

“Still paranoid? Jesus. Nope,” she said, and swung an arm out to the side when he opened the door a little wider, “see? All by myself.”

The stun gun, hidden in his hand behind the door, lowered to his side. He nodded once, moved back as she breezed past. No flight suit, just jeans and a dark hoodie. Civilian clothes. Dots of moisture beaded on her shoulders, in her hair. She'd walked through the snow. Tempting to do that himself – the next time it got cold enough for a real snowfall, he could be years in his grave.

“I always wanted to see inside your little den,” Malik said, fingers combing her hair into wet points, “it's exactly how I –”

A rush of water frothed through the gap, burst over his shoes. He closed the door with a quiet click. Don't look at it. Don't think about it.

Crossed wires in the brain. A visual glitch brought on and exacerbated by... recent events. And sleep deprivation. Interesting really. Hallucinations, but not delusions – water was not really leaking into his apartment, or tumbling down the two steps to the door like a liquid slinky. He tapped his foot down, and ripples spread, then forgot they were supposed to be there at all. Made sense.

Rationalisation, sadly, didn't make the experience any less unsettling.

“ – like it, don't get me wrong. It's like a... a Frankenstein's tech lab.” Malik's voice startled the water into a faint glimmer. Sunlight on a lake. Hopefully it would evaporate. “I don't even know what half these things are.”

She knelt among the parts of a dissected monitor he'd taken apart in the middle of the floor – it wasn't as though there was room on his desk – and held up his replica electric bike in one hand. If he could take apart the real version and put it back together, what could stop him from making a tiny one? That had been the reasoning, anyway.

“Hey, is this a –?” Her eyes dropped to his hand. No longer smiling, now wary. “Uh. Is that a stun gun?”

“It's – yes. Not for you, though. I wouldn't... stun you.” The words stumbled out. Water flowed into a bigger pool, lapped at Malik's knees and around the metal on the floor. “I'll... put it down here, if you're so worried.” He tossed the stun gun onto his desk. It scattered some papers, clinked against his coffee mug. Her eyes followed, then focused on the screen of his computer. Softened. When she stood, the water parted. A few steps took her to the desk. In the light of the monitor, her skin paled.

“Panchaea?”

She would smell a lie. He wasn't in the mood anyway. “I was looking through the blueprints. Just for... peace of mind.” Water under his shoes, silent with every step. He brushed a few micro-usb ports off the seat of the couch – a ratty, sweat-yellow abomination with holes in the upholstery – and picked at loose threads. Drops of water bled down his cabinets, his bookshelf, joined the shimmering pool that didn't exist.

It wasn't real, and it was getting worse.

Malik turned away from the screen, slow, as though afraid the scared dog would bite at any sudden movements. No sympathy in her expression, but a dull horror instead, as though she had walked in on the scene of a grisly murder and he still held the axe. “Are you

_doing okay there, Pritchard?” Jensen's arm draped across the back of the couch, and eye lenses slid back. In the dimmed lights of the tech lab, augmented irises glowed green.“You look like you need a week of sleep to catch up. I was the one who ran around and got the Typhoon, not you.”_

“ _You sound so very concerned. I'm fine, Jensen. Fine and extremely busy, so I'd appreciate it if you went home.” He'd read the same lines of code over and over for ten minutes. The letters and numbers fuzzed themselves together. No matter how much he glared at the screen, his concentration slipped away. Focus. Get it together._

“ _Need to see Sarif when he's done.” The green glow didn't flicker. Why the staring? Intimidation? Two could play at that game – or would, if he trusted his eyes not to water. “Want to go get a drink after?”_

“Pritchard!”

Malik's voice in his ear, threaded with panic. Her hands, shaking his shoulders, yanking his body out of the couch. A swirl of colour, the world spinning round and round and round like something loading up, rebooting. He steadied himself. Looked down. The gleam of light on water still roiled at his ankles.

“ _What?”_ He batted her hands away, a mistake as it turned out. The left side of his body tilted, and compensation meant he swayed on the spot like a drunk –

_didn't know why he agreed, but under the acid of his reply it still came out as a 'yes.' And then the streets of Detroit, and Jensen didn't say much, but that was Jensen anyway, all quiet and brooding and annoying, snipping insults that softened as the night went on –_

“That's enough,” he said to nothing in particular. Dead and gone. Pointless to keep going over it again and again and again. He squeezed his eyes shut to burn out some of the sting, and when he opened them, Malik grabbed his wrists.

“What the _hell_ , Pritchard?” Anger from concern, from fear. “What is wrong with you? You - you blanked out, I thought you were...” She let him go, took a step back. Ripples at her feet. Forgot themselves. “You think you should maybe go to a hospital? Or a LIMB clinic, see if there's something up with your augs? Because I'm pretty sure that wasn't... normal.”

“I don't need medical attention.” What he needed was a barrier for grief. Some way to collect it all up, put it in its own metal box and flood it, drown it. Or some way to turn his imagination off. That would be nice too. “The hospitals here are scanning for biochips anyway. Wary about Augs after the Incident. I wouldn't get in. If it makes you feel better, it's my own fault. I haven't exactly been seeing a lot of my bed.”

“Sarif's...” Her hesitation was a question. It folded in on itself. “Does he know about this? Does he know you're...”

“Having strange flashbacks? No. I haven't emailed him since yesterday, and that was... brief.” Brief: code for 'extremely strained.' “I wouldn't tell him anyway. No need to give him a reason to extend this little vacation. And it's fine. It's only happening because I'm tired.”

If anyone could look less convinced at that moment, he would pay to see it. “You're sure you're all right.”

“That's what I just said.”

“Okay. I just can't imagine a scenario where someone having flashbacks is _fine,_ but I suppose I'm just not as smart as you, Frank.”

“Don't feel bad.” He sank back into the couch. “Few people are.”

“What are they?” She tipped the dusty shell of an old-style PC onto the floor, perched herself on the seat next to him. “I mean... the flashbacks.”

“Nothing distressing.” Grief stole that for itself, made him dream awake, forced him to imagine Jensen in Panchaea. He could tell her about Jensen sitting on the couch in his lab, or the brush of augmented fingers against his. But his tongue failed him, and all those clever words drained right out of his head. “Just some good things. Important things. Things Sarif doesn't need to know.”

“Sarif probably thinks I'm dead, and I want to keep it that way. But now that you mention him...” Ah, here it was. “What exactly happened? I've only talked to Richie, and he makes up the _biggest_ bullshit stories ever. He said you went crazy, broke into Sarif's office and started screaming at him. Lying little bastard. But you must have done something to get kicked out for a week, huh?”

“Well, I didn't play twenty questions with Athene, that's for sure.”

“Sorry.” At least she had the grace to look ashamed. “Don't misunderstand. I just want to know if you're okay.”

Ice spread across the windows. If he looked at it directly, it retreated, melted back into nothing.

“We were in the elevator. Sarif and I. Going down. Just the two of us.” The ice furled at his whisper. Patterns wove on the glass. Sarif, just a few days back, and a couple of weeks out of the coma. Hair threaded with more grey, face paler. Movements stiff, eyes dull. A different man than the one who set foot aboard Panchaea.

Anyone else would have felt sympathy.

“He kept talking about the board, about the board's decision, how they sold us to Tai Yong.” And he'd stared out across the Detroit skyline, fingers numb around the metal handrail, the words filtering themselves slowly into his head. “He looked like... someone had ripped his heart right out of his chest.”

Anyone who hadn't stood next to Sarif giving the order to cut off Jensen's arms and legs would have felt sympathy.

Malik leaned forward, her eyes unblinking. “What did you say to him, Frank?” Soft words. Back to coaxing the anxious dog.

He met her eyes. “I told him he killed Adam.”

Not quite like that, though, not nearly as calm or as clear. The words had snarled from his throat, thick and bestial. Fury tangled with grief. If Sarif said something afterwards, the memory had fled to some dark corner in his head. The next thing he knew he was back in his office, a security guard's hand on his shoulder and Athene between him and a red-faced Sarif.

_You took his eyes and his arms and his legs. Did you see him in the clinic, flying on all those painkillers, David? Did you hear those sounds he made when he thought no one was in the room, that little choking sob, like a child trying not to scream?_

Silence inched like the frost across the walls. Malik stared at a spot high above his head. Voice wavered the edges of words. “You really liked Jensen, didn't you? Even though you fought like... well,” she tilted her palms towards the ceiling. “We thought we'd be cleaning up blood one day. Sarif said he'd lock you both in an office and let you sort it out. I think he was only half-joking.”

“We came to an understanding.”

An understanding on the street after the bar, when they'd slipped down an alley to avoid an unexpected group of Derlict Row Ballers. Jensen's hand, tight around his wrist, tugged him into the shadows when the gang decided to roam down the street, howling their hatred into the night like a pack of deranged wolves. Adrenaline stirred him in ways he'd almost forgotten.

Malik nodded once, as though working through things in her head. “Did you sleep with him?”

“I think that would have been easier.” Threads of the couch wound tight around his fingers. “No. We went to a bar after he came back from recovering the Typhoon. He bought me a drink. He was nice.” Helpless, his hand gripped the arm of the couch. “He was _nice_.”

And in the alley, even nicer.

_The boarded-up doorway offered shadow. A tight fit for both of them while the mob streamed past, chanting, riling themselves up for a fight. Idiots. If he'd been drunk rather than the light side of tipsy, he might have done something stupid. Dodge out from behind Jensen and taunt them, maybe._

_Twin rings of green flicked in the darkness, twitched from side to side like the tail of an upset cat. A brush of material, the sense of something too close. Heat filtered through his jacket. Mechanical augmentations ran hot – not enough to burn, but feverish compared to the unaugmented._

_The rough scrape of brick wall at his back. “Jensen –”_

“ – was nice, yeah. Helped me out more than once.” Malik's voice broke through. He tightened his hold of the couch. Here, not back there. Not dreaming. “It sucks you didn't have a lot of time before Panchaea. You two... could have been good for each other. As weird as that sounds.” Her eyes went to the window, followed the path of snowflakes outside. “It wasn't your fault, you know.”

_I think... you're on your own, Jensen._

The last words. Why hadn't he said something more meaningful?

“I had to babysit him through firefights, help him sneak around various countries. Opened doors. Pinged hostiles.” A solid lump lodged in his throat. If he cried in front of her he'd never forgive himself. “I'm aware that it wasn't my fault. I _know_. It doesn't make me feel less guilty that I couldn't do anything. That I wasn't there –”

Malik stood, and he shut his mouth. Her arms folded tight. A few steps, and she stood in front of the window. Fingers rubbed the corners of her eyes. It took her a moment to say something, and in that time the frost retreated, then crept forward. A tide of ice.

“Look, I'm going back to Hengsha at dawn. And I want you to come with me.”

“Abandon ship?”

“Before it sinks completely.” A small smile touched her lips. “Let's face it, Frank, the Captain's going to escape in his lifeboat and lash the rest of the crew to the wheel. Sarif won't have his company, but he'll still have most of his fortune. What do you have?”

He cleared his throat, swallowed until he could talk like a normal person. “I'm not an idiot. I _have_ a contingency plan.”

“Oh? Isolay tucked a business card into your pants, did they? Or was it Versalife?”

“Neither. I decided to stay here, do freelance work. I'll try not to get arrested again.”

She turned to face him, unease tilting her eyebrows down. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

“I've done it before. It's good money. Sometimes the work is a little –”

“No, Frank –” She came towards him, sat herself back on the couch. “It's _dangerous_. You know those offers are going to pour in when Sarif Industries goes under. And with the big companies... I've seen some of what goes on behind the scenes, and I don't mean head-hunting or poaching here. We're talking _kidnapping._ If you're freelance, that'll make it way easier to take you.”

Obviously she hadn't seen his collection of proximity mines and programmed turrets. “The risks are high. They'd be high whatever I choose to do. I can take care of myself.”

“Do you call this taking care of yourself, Frank?” She said the words without malice. Fingers folded into his. Colder than Jensen's. “You're having weird flashbacks – you can't say that's _fine_.  Come to Hengsha with me.”

“This little vacation is up in two days. And then I'm going back to work. Sorry, Faridah. I'm not abandoning my post, even if we are in the eleventh hour.” Hard getting out the words now, mind slipping like fingertips over ice. “What I said to Sarif, it was cruel –”

“You think?”

“But what he did to Jensen was worse.”

Jensen, who smelled like hot metal and the acrid oil of guns. Who'd pressed against him in that doorway, all shadow and silence, and warmed more than his skin. Who didn't deserve to die alone under the crushing pressure of the ocean.

Frost on his knuckles, his palm. He ran a thumb over it, like Jensen had run a thumb down his cheek, felt nothing.

Laughter crept from nowhere, bubbled out of his mouth, punctured by sobs. Lungs jerked, sent bolts of pain through his chest. Couldn't catch his breath. No control. Hysteria a horrifying gush that wouldn't turn off. A burst artery of emotion.

Deep breaths now. Slow. Try to stop the bleeding. Black dots pulsed in the air, tiny dead suns. He expected Malik's hands back on his shoulders, but when he finally managed to choke down the sobs, she sat there, deer-in-headlights still. Eyes wide. Laughter tempered into hitched gasps. Tears crept down his face. This must be what it felt like to cling on to a high ledge by bitten fingernails, gravity eager and tugging like a starved dog with an animal skin. He swallowed the last sounds. Could not look up from his hands.

Her voice, low and firm and flat, like she had squashed down emotions of her own. “Get some sleep, Frank. If you're not coming with me, then for God's sake, at least get some sleep.”

A sensible suggestion. Logical. The ice would melt, the water would drain through the floorboards. Maybe.

“ _Can we talk about it now?”_

“You're not coming back, are you?” He shoved the memory to one side and made himself focus.

“No. I'm not on Sarif's payroll any more, they have me down as MIA. Detroit... it's been fun, but it's not really my city.” He could see her now, walking back through the snow, hopping back aboard her VTOL, wherever she'd set it down.

_The VTOL engine roared over the infolink. Adam had to be halfway to Hengsha for the second time before he plucked up the courage. Damn coward. Should have grabbed a fistful of that black coat beforehand, made Adam listen. Because clearly pushing each other up against walls was not off-limits._

_A drag of several seconds of silence over the infolink. No words exchanged between Malik or Adam. He took the chance._

“ _Can we talk about it now?”_

_None of that military op stiffness, not this time. Adam's sigh blew down the infolink, straight into his ear. “Talk about what, Francis?”_

“ _Don't play games, Jensen, I'm not in the mood – you know damn well 'what.'”_

“ _I can't believe you want to do this now. Anyone ever tell you that your timing could use a little work?” Another sigh, and no doubt a good measure of eye-rolling as well. He wasn't even there and he could tell. Under the desk, his fingers worked themselves into his knee. Adam's voice, hundreds of miles away, touched with something that sounded like regret. “We'll talk about it when I get back.”_

“Are you staying for the night?” He didn't know where that came from. Maybe it was the fear of the ice creeping up his legs, or the way the white layer of frost crawled over his arms like a growing cancer. Or maybe it was the way Adam's voice echoed in his head – _when I get back, when I get back._ Either way it sounded sordid, a sleazy invitation. She arched an eyebrow at him.

“And here I thought you liked them dark and brooding.”

“I just meant –”

“Yeah, I know. I'll stay as long as I can.” She leaned back, tilted her head up. “Some damn mess this is, huh? I thought we'd be going for way longer at SI. Guess there's some things that just like to sneak up on you, screw you over.”

_The rough scrape of brick wall at his back. “Jensen –”_

“ _These augs are really something.” Jensen's voice in front of him. Those green rings flicked over his face. “This CASIE aug... I thought it was some useless garbage Sarif shoved in there so he could stamp my forehead with the company name. Seems to be good for some things.”_

“ _You're using your social enhancer on me?” Somehow that stung more than it should have. And he should be pulling away, shoving Jensen off and demanding to know what the hell –_

“ _Elevated heartrate,” Jensen said, as though reading something mildly interesting from a book, “but not from fear. Increased perspiration. Blood pressure. Pupil dilation.”_

“ _You sound like the Web MD hologram.”_

_Damn social enhancements. What the hell had Sarif been thinking? By all means, give the big dangerous man the ability to read body language at an invasive level. Because that wouldn't backfire at all._

_He winced at the first touch of augmented fingertips against his cheek. Couldn't see the smirk, but he could damn well hear it. “This is a whole new side to you, Francis. Never thought buying you one drink would get you in the mood so easily.”_

“ _I'm not in the mood. I'm being assaulted in an alley by an Aug with personal space issues. Trust me, nothing could be less arousing –”_

_Jensen closed the gap between them, and his words stuttered into nothing. Blood decided to move south. His lips parted, the equivalent of rolling on his back to show his throat._

_A hand patted the wall next to his head. “Well, obviously if this isn't fun for you...”_

_Space between them again. The sensation of something slipping through his fingers. He grabbed out, flailed like a drowning man, and caught the collar of a coat. Pulled Jensen forward with an 'oh no you don't' sound._

_He started the kiss, made sure it was gentle. An apology he wouldn't say aloud. Augmented hands found his, laced fingers together. Teeth grazed his lips, and the paint-thinner taste of bad whiskey stroked across his tongue. A sense of exploration, like the first few awkward teenage fumblings, when a palm trailed up his leg, came to rest against his inner thigh._

Weights on his eyelids. He yawned, and Malik shifted next to him. His head lolled. No more Malik, just a smudge of colour behind a blurred lense. At least now he couldn't see the water, or the ice. “Do you think he was lonely? Do you think he... missed Megan?”

She stayed quiet for so long he thought maybe he hadn't spoken at all.

“Yeah,” she said at last. “But that doesn't mean you meant any less to him.”

Dropping. Falling down a long, long way. “Malik?”

“Go to sleep, Frank.” Her hand in his. Not augmented, but comforting all the same.

The water would sink through the floorboards, and the ice would melt, and maybe, when he woke up, Adam would be alive.

“ _Hey, Pritchard.”_

_Jensen stepped into his tech lab the next morning with as much apprehension as a lamb wandering into a wolf-infested forest. Eye shields up. Hardly playing fair._

“ _Yes, Jensen?” He tried on the usual caustic undertone, but it came out weak, a real question instead of a snarled acknowledgement._

_A nod. “Good morning.”_

_Those arms had pinned him to the alley wall. Those lips had tasted his throat. He hated himself for looking down at his keyboard. “...Morning.”_

_A small, victorious smile in reply. Jensen turned to leave, and a spark of alarm jolted him. “Wait! I...”_

_Eye shields retracted. Jensen pushed the door closed with one hand. “You want to talk about last night, Francis? 'Cause I don't have time, sorry. Gotta head down to the DPD.”_

“ _And play with all your cop buddies, being manly and pushing things around?”_

“ _I know you like it when I push things around, Francis.”_

_He rolled his eyes, but his stomach clenched, and under the desk his palms slid across his knees. A shrug, and before he could say anything, Jensen stood beside his desk, towering over him. Leaned down._

_Lips pressed to his temple._

_He... tolerated it._

_Jensen smiled, a slight tickle against his skin.“We'll talk later.”_

 


End file.
